“There are now at least six city mayors and community leaders in Russian captivity. They are among thousands of Ukrainians who are not guilty of anything, but have been in captivity for years. And not only from 2022. But also since 2014. We are doing everything to get them back. 3,767 Ukrainians and Ukrainian women have already been returned from captivity. We involve intermediaries for this.

Yulia Navalnaya * announced the start of a sketch competition for the monument to Alexei Navalny at the Borisov Cemetery in Moscow. “We thought and pondered for a very long time what this monument should be like. For any family that has lost a loved one, this is a very important question. But our situation is special. Not only we lost a loved one, but also millions of other people along with us.

The Petrozavodsk City Court sentenced pensioner Tatyana Savinkina to a fine of 200 thousand rubles in a criminal case for posting anti-war leaflets in a multi-storey building. She was found guilty under the article about repeated “discrediting” of the Russian army and was immediately released from punishment due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, the publication From Karelia with freedom reported. The prosecutor's office requested a fine of 300 thousand.

The Department of the Investigative Committee for the Magadan Region opened a criminal case under the article of “evading the duties of a foreign agent” against the editor-in-chief of “Important Stories” Alesya Marokhovskaya, the publication reported.

The seventh night of protests in Tbilisi, despite searches and detentions of opposition leaders during the day, passed quietly: the police did not disperse the protesters, and they did not use fireworks. Thousands of demonstrators again gathered near the parliament; according to Paper Kartuli, the police searched and detained those leaving the metro near the parliament. However, the hard acceleration that had happened all previous days did not happen.

The artistic director of the Novosibirsk Theater Leonid Kipnis is leaving the post he has held since 1995, the NGS portal reported. Kipnis was fired by decision of the Ministry of Culture amid a conflict with one of the actors. In September 2024, Anton Lindman appealed to the Investigative Committee with a demand to check Kipnis’s actions under articles about “calls for terrorism” and “discrediting” the army.

Syrian rebels have driven pro-government forces out of Hama, winning a major new victory after a lightning advance across northern Syria and dealing a fresh blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. The Syrian army announced that rebels had entered Hama after intense fighting and said it would redeploy outside the city "to preserve civilian lives and prevent urban fighting", Reuters reported.

French Prime Minister Michel Barnier is expected to resign on Friday after far-right and left-wing lawmakers voted to overthrow his government, plunging France into its second major political crisis in six months, Reuters writes. Barnier, who previously served as the European Union's Brexit negotiator, will become the shortest-lived prime minister in modern French history. No French government has lost a vote of confidence since Georges Pompidou in 1962.

During the debate in the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don, the prosecutor requested 12 and 11 years in prison for the defendants in the case of arson of the military registration and enlistment office in Goryachy Klyuch, Bogdan Abdurakhmanov and Boris Goncharenko, the Solidarity Zone project reported. The first is accused of committing a “terrorist attack,” the second of “aiding terrorism.” Goncharenko and Abdurakhmanov were detained on October 7, 2022.

The co-chair of the Voice movement is accused of links to the “undesirable” European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations ( ENEMO ), which was banned in 2021. On August 17, 2023, at least 15 election observers in several regions of Russia who were associated with Golos were searched in the case of Grigory Melkonyants. The next day, Melkonyants himself was sent to a pre-trial detention center.